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The Journal of Eraamion Firaal
This is Eraamion Firaal's personal account of the adventures so far. Day 1 I'd been on the road with Traveus for a day now and we were heading to Fallcrest. He found Thofire and I on the road and offered to guide us on our way if we guarded his wagon. He already had four other people with him: a human botanist called Meredith; the half-elf cleric Jedcit; Orklan the dwarven fighter and a half-orc fighter who's name escapes me. Everything was going fine, until we were ambushed on the road by some goblins and wolves. We fought them off easily enough, but Traveus lost a box after a goblin ran off with it. I would've thought it was worthless if Traveus had not offered us thirty gold each to retrieve it. Just as we were about to head there we noticed a hooded figure observing the scene from a nearby hillock. We believed this man to be the goblin's leader, so we approached where they went and entered. We were immediately encountered by a group of goblins. Before I could move I was struck by a hex, temporarily blinding me. While my allies were fighting one of the goblins had opened a door and released a drake into the room. We slowly fought back and killed them and I even managed to intimidate the drake. After a team member had pushed it into a burning brazier I used what little draconic I knew to frighten it out of the room. The next room we entered had some rats and more goblins. We dispatched of the rats, then took down the goblins from afar. Thofire managed to find a crossbow on the corpse of one of them, so he took it. We believed the next room to be similar to this one so we created a quick strategy of how to dispatch the enemies. The next room was different though. As soon as Orklan charged in he was injured and repelled by an invisible wall. I cast my light spell into the centre of the room, revealing it was set out in a set of alternating black and white squares. This confused the others, who could not understand what happened. However, I quickly realised that it was set out like a game I played in my youth: chess. Orklan had stepped onto the square of a bishop, and so I told him how he could move around the room. The rest of us then started to progress onto whichever squares were available to us, those of the knight and the bishop. Suddenly, some chess piece automatons approached us. They came in different varieties: from pawns to rooks to queens. I speculated that they had to move in the same way as their corresponding piece would. Then, the battle started. Quickly, the situation became dire. Meredith went down after a vicious blow from a rook; the half-orc was knocked out by a surprise attack from a knight and Thofire was knocked down by the queen him and I were facing. As a last resort, I told Jedcit to drag as many people as he could from the room. I then gathered as many automatons as I could in a small area and fired my sleep spell. It was much to my surprise when the spell knocked each and every one of them out. They fell to the ground, unconscious, and were unable to get up. We then recovered for a long while after the battle and got back to full health. We then progressed. The fourth room was strange as well. A group of cultists noticed us and were immediately hostile. We noticed a statue of a god in the middle of the room and Meredith identified them as being cultists of Bahamut. We attempted to pose as followers of this god too. Despite hiding my mark of the Outsider, they knew we didn't worship their god and they attacked us. My allies had foolishly cajoled me into going in the front and I was the first to pay the price. One of the cultists hit me hard and I fell down. In the excitement, I panicked and fired another sleep spell. This time it hit so powerfully that it killed them all outright, bar one: a shapeshifter. When Thofire questioned her, she told us of her race and that the hooded man we had seen was Malareth, a necromancer. This information was valuable but she then tried to sell us more for a bribe. Not happy with the price, someone in our group tried to intimidate her to gain it for free. Unfortunately, it didn't work as expected. She turned into a rat and ran off. All that was left was the shattered vial of a potion she had on her. Needless to say, I was quite annoyed at this. I did not let it show though. We knew the next room would be the last, Malareth would be in there. Orklan opened the door, and moved in. Surprising no one, Malareth was indeed in the room. The necromancer was standing over a desk, studying Traveus' box. Malareth noticed us, but did not move. Instead, he sent a group of three skeletons and a zombified troll to destroy us. We were not so easily defeated. The troll got a hit on Orklan, who in response sent it flailing to the floor with an almight smash. Another hit and it returned once again to death. Unfortunately, I was stuck in the back of the corridor throughout this and could not fire a spell without risking an injury to one of my friends. I could not fey step in without risking being hit by the zombie. Malareth then became interested in us and approached my party. He fired magical, necromantic rays at us while his health was whittled down. Finally, Meredith killed him with an arrow through the heart. He flew towards the back of the room and became pinned to the wall. Their master dead, the skeletons' life force started to ebb away. Finally, my allies started to disperse into the room and I could enter. We made short work of the skeletons, including one which I hit twice with the same arc lightning. I progressed to Traveus' box and against his wishes, I opened it. We had to know what was insde and know why it was worth stealing over everything else; why it was worth a total of 180 gold from Traveus. Inside it, was a skull. We came back to Traveus and we immediately interrogated him about the skull and the necromancer. Apparently, Malareth was an old enemy of Traveus and the skull was an evil magical item that pulsed with necromantic energy. Traveus then told us that he was on the road to the Cairngorm Peaks and would give us all 70 gold each, on top of the 30 gold each for getting the skull, for escorting him there. Apparently a monastery existed in the peaks that could purify the skull. I could sense the energy of the skull, so I knew that Traveus was telling us at least a smidgen of the truth. We all decided that we should trust the merchant for now so we carried on along the road. We could see Fallcrest in the distance and we would stop there for the night. Kill total: one drake, two goblins, one dire rat, three chess automatons, four cultists of Bahamut and one skeleton. Day 2 We arrived in Fallcrest and Traveus gave us two hours to buy extra supplies and a map of the Nentir Vale. A few of us bought torches and minor supplies and we then entered the map shop. An old human man was running it and I told him we would like a map of the area. He immediately turned around and pulled an old map of the area off the shelf. At first, he attempted to charge us 20 gold for it! None of us had that amount but I managed to convince him to give it to us for 15 gold with a bit of magical suggestion. I looked around to see if anyone could pay for it. Unfortunately, all of them had spent nearly all of their gold on their supplies. More than a bit annoyed, I handed over 15 of my 18 gold to the old man and I stowed the map in a safe compartment in my satchel, next to the Eye of Odjervith. We carried on along the road until we reached a checkpoint at a bridge with 4 human guards and a captain waiting there. Category:The Story So Far Category:Character Backstories